Photo Flash: BOLEROS FOR THE DISENCHANTED Runs At The Goodman Theatre Thru 7/26

"I am thrilled to welcome back José to the Goodman with this gorgeous new play," said Artistic Director Robert Falls. "In a season that has included a number of vivid romances (from the doomed triangle at the center of Desire Under the Elms to the politically fraught coupling of Jan and Esme in Rock 'n' Roll), Boleros for the Disenchanted provides an especially wise insight into the vagaries of human relationships-and the bonds that hold them together."

Boleros for the Disenchanted received its world-premiere production last season, directed by Henry Godinez at Yale Repertory Theatre. After her fiancée breaks her heart, Flora vows never to fall for an unfaithful man again. Then she meets Eusebio, who sweeps her off her feet, and off to America-away from her family and her familiar life in Puerto Rico. Thirty-nine years later, an angel visits Eusebio with a mysterious message that stirs up old secrets. Boleros for the Disenchanted is a bittersweet and ultimately uplifting story about what it takes for two people to make a life together far from home, and the struggle to hold on to love in the face of life's unexpected challenges.

"I wanted to blend the fairytale optimism of Flora and Eusebio's early courtship days in Puerto Rico with a hardcore, gritty reality later in their life together," said José Rivera, who earned an Oscar nomination for his screen adaptation of The Motorcycle Diaries. "While this play is really a love story, it has another layer-a political consciousness that explores what happens when a society is so destitute and depressed that it has to emigrate. Literature and films often explore the immigrant experience once people have arrived; I thought it would be interesting to address what compels people to leave. In Puerto Rico they have family, they have love, they have connection to land, they have all these things-and yet there's still something that moves them to take this journey."

Playwright José Rivera is the author of the OBIE Award-winning Marisol (La Jolla Playhouse, Actors Theatre of Louisville and The Public Theater); The House of Ramon Iglesias (New York's Ensemble Studio Theatre); Giants Have Us in Their Books (Magic Theatre); Sonnets for an Old Century (INTAR Theatre); Sueño (Hartford Stage); Cloud Tectonics (Playwrights Horizons, Goodman Theatre); Massacre (Sing to Your Children); and the OBIE Award-winning References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot (South Coast Repertory and The Public Theater). He studied with Gabriel García Marquez at The Sundance Institute and was writer-in-residence at The Royal Court Theatre, London, on a Fulbright Arts Fellowship in Playwriting. Honors include a Whiting Award, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Rockefeller Foundation. Television credits include the critically acclaimed Eerie, Indiana series, which he co-created and produced, as well as HBO's ThE Eddy Matos Story. In addition to The Motorcycle Diaries (Walter Salles, director) Rivera has written the screenplay for Salles' upcoming film of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The native Puerto Rican serves on the boards of The Sundance Institute and the Independent Feature Project.

Director Henry Godinez is the resident artistic associate at Goodman Theatre, where he is the curator of the Latino Theater Festival, which will have its fifth installment in August 2010. Godinez appeared in the Goodman Theatre/Teatro Vista world premiere of José Rivera's Massacre (Sing to Your Children) and has also directed Mariela in the Desert, Millennium Mambo, Electricidad, Straight as a Line, Zoot Suit, Red Cross, Cloud Tectonics and A Christmas Carol. Other directing work includes plays at Chicago Children's Theatre, Apple Tree Theatre, Victory Gardens Theatre, Next Theatre, Lifeline Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Signature Theatre, Missouri Repertory Theatre, Oak Park Festival Theatre, Colorado Shakespeare Festival and Teatro Vista, which he co-founded and where he served as artistic director for the first five years. Born in Havana, Cuba, he currently serves as an associate professor at Northwestern University and was named the 2008 Latino of the Year by the Chicago Latino Network.

Photo Credit: Eric Y. Exit